Today’s Budget Proposal

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Today, the House has released their budget plan and it has quickly become the talk to the town. With a reduction of spending and reforms to control the ballooning costs in healthcare, the plan is a step in the right direction. Overall the plan proposes short term spending cuts and a plan to slow the growth of the national debt, now over $15.5 trillion dollars. (Make sure to look at the side-by-side comparison of the proposed budgets in our latest Fact Sheet, here.)

Designed to act as a broad overview of spending for the fiscal year 2013, a budget passed this year will set the tone for spending and what actions will be taken later on to fix our fiscal crisis. In today’s proposed budget, Congressman Ryan attempts to point out real problems in the skyrocketing costs of healthcare and reform a complicated tax code that ensnares more and more middle class Americans every year. The budget proposal would reduce the number of income tax brackets from six to two and reduce the rates to 25% and 10%, proposed cutting the corporate tax rate and doing away with the alternative minimum tax all together.

With no plans to debate a budget anytime soon, the Senate is poised to quickly dismiss the House plan and continue to spending without any budget. By not passing a budget this year, Congress will have operated without a budget resolution since the Senate passed one in April of 2009.

Congress has a fundamental flaw when it comes to spending and the lack of real budgets to outline where your tax dollars will go is at the heart of that problem. While today’s proposed budget is a step in the right direction, it is not a complete solution. Without real reforms to spending, and a Senate that will at least consider them, lawmakers continue to push the country further into debt and closer to the fiscal cliff.